Architecture: Yaddo Mansion

Angels reside in the Yaddo Mansion.
The cherubs bust out of darkened oak furniture, and the stone and marble in the palatial home, which was built by Wall Street baron Spencer Trask and turned into an artist residency by his wife, Katrina Trask, a poet and playwright.

“We think that it’s a theme because of their four children who died at childhood,” Yaddo’s spokeswoman Lesley Leduc said.

Yaddo, a writer’s and artist’s retreat since 1926, opens the doors to its dramatic mansion for the first time in eight years on Sept. 17-18. Visitors will learn much about the Trasks, known in the city as significant philanthropists and tragic legends.

A lifelong New Yorker with Puritan roots, Spencer Trask became a tenacious Gilded Age financier. In 1881, seven years after marrying the love of his life, he moved into an Italian villa on several hundred acres near the Saratoga Race Course. Their four children – Alanson, Christina, Spencer Jr., and Katrina – died from various illnesses between 1880 and 1889.

A man of finance but also culture, Spencer Trask chaired the State Reservation Commission. The body preserved the city’s carbonic springs from commercial depletion, and its work ultimately led to the establishment of Congress Park, the city’s Visitor Center and the Spirit of Life statue, which is dedicated to Spencer Trask.

The New York City banker nearly died of pneumonia in 1891, the same year that a fire destroyed the villa that he and his wife had restored. The couple hired architect William Halsey Wood of New Jersey, who designed a 55-room English manor residence that blends Medieval, Gothic and Renaissance styles. The Trasks built the “modified American Queen Anne” in just two years.

The 45,000-square-foot home contains three floors, not counting a basement or Katrina’s writing room in the mansion’s top tower. Its roof is made of slate, copper and single ply roof membranes. Wood employed the most advanced technology of the time, and included hidden passageways – including one behind a fireplace – that allowed workers access to plumbing fixtures and electrical wiring without ruining walls.

The Trasks took an active role in decorating the interior, and their touches endure.
Walls consist of rough-faced stone and stucco on the upper floors. The dark oak furniture evoked England in the time of Shakespeare. Carved images of knights are carved into 12 chairs at the dining room’s main table. The dining room also contains an elaborate collection of silver.

“No landscape architect, no consulting engineer, no clever person with unknowing knowledge, no unimaginative man with a big diploma interfered with the working out of our plan,” Katrina Trask wrote.

The mansion has about a dozen fireplaces. Its decor features tremendous works of art, notably stained-glass windows by Tiffany Studios and antique furnishings from the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. A Latin inscription on one window translates into, “The flame unconquered by fire, Yaddo rises up again in peace.”

The Trasks enjoyed trips to Italy, which influenced much of the home and its furnishings. The mansion’s wide-open “Great Hall” room emits a Roman or Greek feel, with its stained glass, angels playing flutes, marble head busts and tiled space with a running fountain.
With no immediate heirs, the Trasks envisioned an artist residence at Yaddo. Despite her frequent bouts with illness, Katrina Spencer poured herself into the project.

Spencer Trask lost his eye in a traffic accident in 1909. That New Year’s Eve, while riding a train to New York City to deliver the State Reservation Commission’s final report, a different train struck the car he was riding in at Croton-on-Hudson. Spencer Trask was the only person to die in the accident.
Katrina Trask passed away in 1922. The Yaddo Mansion accepted its first artist resident four years later.

Each year, it hosts 12-15 residents from October to May, and more than 30 from May to August. It’s hosted James Baldwin, Truman Capote, Langston Hughes, Sylvia Plath, Mario Puzo and others.

On public tours, visitors always want to know what artist worked in what room, Leduc said. “And how did the children die.”